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Building Brands

As an intern last summer, Evan Roberts, a senior communication arts major from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, contributed his public relations expertise to help “build brands” with Liggett Stashower in Cleveland, Ohio. Liggett Stashower is an advertising and public relations firm that focuses on brand-building for clients, especially in the building products industry. Some of Liggett’s clients include Glidden™ paint, Duck® brand duct tape and Freshaire Choice™.

Every summer, Liggett employs several interns that work on projects individually and as a team. Roberts, as a brand management intern, says, “Every day was something different.”

One of Roberts’ first assignments took him to the weekend-long Avon Heritage Duct Tape Festival in Avon, Ohio. He manned the Duck duct tape craft tent and promoted the Stuck-at-Prom Duck duct tape scholarship contest. Stuck-at-Prom provides a $3,000 scholarship to the high school couple that creates the best prom outfit and accessories completely out of duct tape. From the festival, Roberts learned how to promote a brand through face-to-face interaction, but more importantly, he learned “a lot of facts about duct tape.”

Roberts’ intern class was given a challenge over the course of the internship to successfully brand themselves. Together, they created the “On the move” slogan. It encompassed the fact that all seven interns were seniors and planned to be “on the move” to big things after graduation. Also, at the start of the summer, the intern class helped Liggett Stashower move offices from one Cleveland building to another. They designed “on the move” T-shirts and unveiled their brand at an event in front of their parents where they presented posters and shared about their internship experience.

In addition to the interns’ daily activities and special projects, they took field trips to the offices of The Plain Dealer, the Channel 3 News Studio, a print shop and Cleveland’s ESPN radio station. Roberts says, “As an intern you’re really involved, and you’re never bored.”

Roberts credits ONU for providing him with the abilities to land the internship. He says, “I had a basis for writing because of my PR writing classes. And working with PRSSA and the firm, Vision Communications, helped me understand the structure of office life.”

As Roberts’ experience demonstrates, many companies have highly developed intern programs set to challenge students and really immerse them in the company’s culture. These days, internships are far from making copies and coffee runs.

All Liggett Stashower interns were required to post an entry each week on the intern blog about their experiences. The blog is used to give insight to future interns and serve as a written log of experiences that the interns can return to. It can be found at http://liggettintern.blogspot.com.